Going for Take:

Inside the World of Indian Moviemaking/ Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief

Indian cinema is the largest film industry in the world and Hindi films ignite the imagination of more than a billion people worldwide. Stephen Alter chose to follow the making of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara, a Bollywood interpretation of Shakespeare’s Othello, set in the violent badlands of Uttar Pradesh. This book reveals the complex process of filmmaking from conception and writing, through pre-production, songwriting, shooting, editing and finally to release. Many Bollywood celebrities appear in this book, as well as the rest of the cast and crew, all of whom contribute to celluloid fantasies that fuel our imaginations and desires.

Reviews

Alter is a natural guide to this complex world.

– Publisher’s Weekly

Best of all is his analysis of how Indian filmmakers combine the classics of Western literature with Indian folk traditions to create a uniquely vibrant and tirelessly crowd-pleasing thrust of the typical Bollywood epic.

– Kirkus Reviews

Stephen Alter has unparalleled access to Bollywood, its directors and stars. But instead of writing an armchair guide, he shows how dreams are made by following the making of a film.